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GREEN ARROW – Oops, We Mean ARROW – Producers Tell How They’re Taking the “Super” Out of Their Superhero

…And to this comics fan that makes them sound like idiots, pure and simple. Why are we not surprised?

Arrow Bosses: We’re Taking the Super Out of Superhero – by Natalie Abrams

Look up in the sky! It’s an actual bird. And there’s an actual plane! And there’s a hooded figure jumping from one rooftop to another! Seems plausible? That’s because in the world of The CW’s Arrow, everything — even Oliver Queen’s trick arrows — is grounded in a reality unlike anything viewers have seen on a superhero series before…

Bringing a different superhero to life so soon after Smallville bid farewell to the same network hasn’t been a challenge for executive producers Marc Guggenheim and Andrew Kreisberg. In fact, they don’t even see Arrow as a superhero. Through their eyes, this is a very different Oliver Queen…

Why Green Arrow? Why choose him to follow in the footsteps of Superman on The CW?
Marc Guggenheim: Well, I think [executive producer] Greg [Berlanti] was the one who said, “Hey, how about Green Arrow?” I think his rationale, if we understand it correctly, was he’s one of the untapped DC characters who’s very iconic. He’s a member of the Justice League. He obviously was on Smallville. But the nature of that character being a street-level hero really lends itself to television. It’s a lot easier to do than Metamorpho or Superman, where it’s visual effects and everything. It can be a very grounded story. We’re always saying it’s not a superhero show. It’s a crime thriller, which is something you can’t do with a more fantastical character.

The show will obviously draw comparisons to Smallville, but how do you keep Arrow grounded in reality?
Andrew Kreisberg: We don’t think about the show as a superhero show. We think about it as a crime thriller and a crime drama and a family drama. The character of Oliver Queen that Justin Hartley played on Smallville was a reaction to Clark Kent and Superman, living in a fantastical world with fantastical characters. In our world, none of that exists. It’s only Oliver Queen and his quest and his crusade. Just from that element of it, it’s a very different take on the character. I mean it’s the same sort of headlines, but the fine print is very, very different.

This strikes us as a pitiful argument designed to bolster a pitifully ignorant decision. If we want a crime thriller, we’ll tune in a crime thriller. And if we want the Green Arrow, hey, high-paid idiot, we’ll be looking to tune in a superhero-superarcher. Let’s face it, by his very nature – a contemporary guy with a bow and arrow instead of a gun – this character is totally not grounded.

We’d predict that this series won’t make it past mid-season…except that it’s on the CW, and if CW viewers were purists about anything, well, they wouldn’t be CW viewers. Sigh…